PROJECT SUMMARY A group of six NIH-funded investigators requests funding for the purchase of a Union Biometrica BioSorter, a large particle sorter, for installation in the Cytometry and Cell Sorting Core at Baylor College of Medicine. A primary application of the instrument will be the sorting and measuring of samples that cannot be handled by traditional flow cytometry based sorters. Samples of interest include the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, primary human organoids, and large and fragile cells such as adipocytes, skeletal myocytes, hepatocytes, or Schwann cells. The instrument will overcome sorting limitations by increasing viability of the samples as well as providing high-throughput for sorting, a tedious and time-consuming task currently done by hand under a microscope. In addition to the six major users, another group of seven minor users has expressed interest in using the BioSorter to sort cardiomyocytes, adult stem cells, and tumor spheroids. The instrument will be located and managed by the Cytometry and Cell Sorting Core at Baylor College of Medicine. There is currently no such instrument in Houston, or even in the state of Texas. The major users are located at Baylor College of Medicine. Other users are both at Baylor College of Medicine and other institutes within the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. In addition to greatly advancing the individual research programs of the users, the instrument will be available to all investigators at institutes within the Texas Medical Center and in the greater Houston area, fostering collaborative research and providing an important regional resource.